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Weather-related fire damages home in Monterey

A fire that was reportedly weather-related severely damaged a home Saturday evening in Monterey on Walton Hills Road in the middle of a severe thunderstorm warning.

"It was most likely a lightning strike," Putnam Fire Chief Tom Brown said Saturday night as about 20 firefighters worked to clear the scene. "The power line was torn off the house. There was fire in the crawl space, fire in the attic and bedroom."

The residents of the log cabin home were not injured.

"They (residents) heard a big bang and started seeing smoke," said Brown, who estimated that the home sustained between $60,000 and $70,000 in damage.

According to Josh Womack, PIO with Putnam County 911, it was a busy 20-30 minutes for 911 officials as the storms rolled through around 6:15 p.m.

“We have power outages reported from Buffalo Valley to Monterey,” he said. “They aren’t widespread, fortunately, but poles and lines are down.”

It was thought the live wires would cause a brush fire, but that was not the case.

Upper Cumberland Electric, Volunteer Electric and Cookeville Electric crews were all called in to assist.

class="p1">Emergency crews were also working the scene of a roll over accident at mile marker 295 that occurred a little after 6 p.m.

Additional information was not available on that incident by press time.

Putnam County was under a severe thunderstorm warning for about a half hour, with weather officials warning of high winds and intense rain. Areas west of Putnam had tornado warnings, but the squall line weakened significantly as it approached Putnam County.

Highs will be in the low 40s today, with lows below freezing, with the rest of the week having highs in the 50s.